1987-88 was not a good year for Internazionale Milano.
Karl-Heiz Rummenigge had recently left the Lombardian capital to be replaced by
Aldo Serena, who the coach Giovanni Trapattoni had brought in from his old club, having purchased him from Inter in the first instance while at Juventus. He scored just six goals in 22 matches. The Belgian attacking
midfielder Enzo Scifo also disappointed, scoring a mere four times over 28
games. Alessandoro Altobelli managed a respectable nine goals, in what would be
the aging forward’s final year for the
Nerazzurri, but it wasn’t enough for the club to finish the season any
higher than fifth – two places down on the previous season.
Trapattoni didn't muck about. Scifo was sold to Girondins de
Bordeaux, Altobelli moved to Juventus for one final fling in Italy’s top flight,
and Daniel Passarella returned to Rive Plate. In their place came established German
internationals Andreas Brehme and Lothar Matthäus,
two promising Italians by the name of Allesandro Bianchi and Nicola Berti, and the
proven Argentine, Ramón Díaz (Díaz was
actually a late replacement for the Algerian Rabah Madjer, who failed the
club’s medical exam).
The arrival of these new players coincided with the appointment of Uhlsport as kit supplier, taking over from Le Coq Sportif. The shirt didn't change much: the sponsor remained the same, the club’s crest, the number of stripes. Only the German manufacturer’s logo was noticeably different – square instead of triangular. Nor was the all-white away jersey radically altered, save for a band of alternating blue and black rhomboids, slightly out of sync with each other, across the front of the shirt. There was, however, one modification that completely transformed the strip's general appearance, and that was the shift from acrylic to polyester. Inter's Milanese neighbours had been wearing polyester since 1986, but the rest of Italy had been slow on the uptake. The dull patina of acrylic now gone, the team looked, quite literally, like a modern outfit.
Internazionale dominated in 1988-89, winning 26
matches, losing only twice, and accumulating a record-breaking 58 points, at a
time when two points were still being awarded for a win and Serie A only accommodated
18 teams. Aldo Serena racked up 22 goals – the highest number in any one season
since Paoli Rossi’s 24 for Juventus over the course 1977-78 – Lothar Matthäus provided nine, Nicola Berti seven, and Ramón Díaz contributed twelve, many of them absolute belters. In total, Inter Milan
scored 67 times, which is an impressive number in a league renowned then for its defensive acumen.
Inter began the 1989-90 season with the scudetto sewn
upon their shirts and the club’s badge relegated to the shoulder. But it wasn’t
the same badge. Inter had ditched the biscione
– a graphic of a serpent, representative of the city of Milan – in favour of their
original emblem, which had never previously graced the shirt on account of the
fact that Italian clubs only began to display their crests sometime towards the
end of the 1970s. (Why, when they did, Inter opted for the profile of a snake, rather
than their traditional insignia comprised of the club’s initials, I am unable
to ascertain.)
Most Italian jerseys come alive when bearing the
scudetto. AC Milan’s handles it very well, while for Juventus the opportunity
to inject some colour into that achromatic strip of theirs must come as
something of a relief. Strangely, Inter’s away shirt carried it better than the
home equivalent; the away shirt was improved by it, whereas the home shirt
suffered. It could be that the blue and black stripes combined with the red dots
incorporated into the word ‘Misura’ detracted from the scudetto’s visual
impact, whereas the predominantly white iteration offered something of a blanker
canvas.
Inter were unable to reproduce the imperious form that
had secured their 13th domestic title. They started well, beating Sampdoria
in the Supercoppa Italia (Italy’s version of the Community Shield, except held
in higher regard), but exited the European Cup in its early stages, losing to Roy
Hodgson’s Malmo, and finished the season seven points behind champions Napoli,
in third place behind cohabitants AC Milan. The problem? New signing Jürgen
Klinsmann, brought in to replace Ramón Díaz, failed to combine with Aldo Serena the
way the Argentine had the previous season. Despite this, the German striker
finished the season as Inter’s top scorer with thirteen league goals, compared to
Serena’s nine and Matthäus’s eleven. Meanwhile, Díaz scored fourteen times for
Monaco playing three games less than Klinsmann.
In 1990, the Italian colours of the scudetto now
absent, Internazionale’s badge shifted from the right shoulder to the left
breast. Tradition prevailed, as any temptation to revert back to the ‘serpent’
badge was resisted, a decision that stands to this day. Inter went on to repeat
their third place finish of the previous year, albeit by a slighter margin.
This time it was Sampdoria who were victorious, with AC Milan again finishing
in second place. But all was not lost. Inter made it to the final of the UEFA
Cup, beating eventual Coppa Italia winners Roma 2-1 on aggregate. (English
readers may recall Inter knocking out Aston Villa in the second round, courtesy
of goals from Klinsmann, Berti and Bianchi during the second leg at the San
Siro).
Giovanni Trapattoni returned to Juventus in 1991 in an
effort to curtail the club’s gradual decline (he partially succeeded, winning
1993’s UEFA Cup, before moving on again to manage Bayern Munich). In an act
that can be seen as retrospectively symbolic, Inter turned to Umbro to supply
their gear – an association that would last the next seven years. During this
period, Inter won the UEFA Cup for a second and third time… but nothing else.
Moreover, their league form became erratic. Placed second in 1992-93, followed
by thirteenth in 1993-94, it would be more than ten years before they were again
crowned champions of Italy.
1989-90
The Uhlsport strip represents something of a high-water
mark, a three year period where Inter were more than equal to whatever AC
Milan or Napoli could throw at them, but which didn’t quite lead to where it
perhaps should have. It is not the point of this article to reason why but merely to delight in how fortuitous it was that
Inter’s brief resurgence, as the eighties turned into the nineties,
corresponded with shirts that were worthy of the moment.
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